The Sousa Mendes Foundation actively seeks families who received lifesaving visas from the Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes in the Spring of 1940. Sousa Mendes, stationed in Bordeaux, France, rescued thousands from the Holocaust by providing them visas to […]
About Olivia Mattis
Dr. Olivia Mattis, President and co-founder of the Sousa Mendes Foundation, is an award-winning musicologist with a Ph.D. from Stanford University and a B.A. from Yale University. Twelve members of her paternal family were rescued by Aristides de Sousa Mendes as they escaped from Belgium in 1940; meanwhile, her maternal grandparents founded and led the Jewish Resistance there, while her mother was a hidden child. Mattis lectures widely, and delivered Keynote addresses at the 2011 Yom Hashoah commemoration of the City of Philadelphia and the 2014 Yom Hashoah commemoration of the City of Rochester. She has organized high-profile international conferences and music festivals that have received media coverage from Good Morning America and The New York Times.